


Myosotis

by vudonn



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 15:16:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14718545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vudonn/pseuds/vudonn
Summary: You wake with a name on your tongue.Phineas shouldn't have dragged Phil into this mess to begin with. It's too late now.





	Myosotis

**Author's Note:**

> this is so unbearably short i hate it  
> still, writing a chaptered fic is kicking my ass, so thisll do for now
> 
>  
> 
> phineas is aged down for reasons

You wake with his name on your tongue.

Phil, you want to call, but you don’t. His name sits on your tongue in your mouth, and you sit in your bed alone.

Alone.

It’s early in the morning but not early enough to keep you in bed. You get up and make your way through the empty house. Your footsteps are loud, echoing and disturbing the silence around you. There’s no one else here in your apartment, and it felt too big without someone else in it.

When you stepped out into the cold misty air of the morning ,you had your heart set on returning to the circus before you remembered.

There is no circus. Not anymore.

As if to remind you further, a boy waved a newspaper in front of your face, asking if you wanted to purchase one. The front page was about him, his circus being burned down by a mob. There is no mention of someone dying in it.

You buy one just to be sure it had really happened. You read it while letting your feet decide on their own where to go. They just carried you to the ruins of what was once your everything, and oh, it was maybe just a little too real.

Sometimes, you think you hit success just a little too young. At the ripe age of twenty-four, you weren’t at all prepared for the popularity your show gained, much less the negative responses it received. You made bad decisions, and you certainly weren’t the most mature about, well, everything. All you wanted to do at the beginning was make money because you were starving and just barely living off the streets. It turned out to be more than you could have ever imagined. And catching the attention of a rich guy who wanted to be happy was just a bonus.

You never meant to drag Phil into this mess.

You step on a burnt sign that proudly spelled your name on it. The memories of last night’s dreams come back, and of course, it was of the fire. The flames reaching for the sky and burning everything below them in the process. Him rushing back in because what was the point if not everyone else was saved and you chasing after him but only catching one glimpse of him turning back at you before the building collapsed.

Someone joins you, and you look over. Anne doesn’t say anything as she looks at you, and you wonder what her relationship with Phil was. They were always close, but sometimes, it felt like there was more to the two of them than what met the eye. Then again, that was more describing your relationship with him than anything else.

“Are you going to start over?” she asks, her voice empty. 

“No,” you say because how could you? Besides the fact that no person in their right mind would give him enough money to do it, the memories of him were too much to bear. How could you dance the same dances he once did with a smile on your face and a happy tone in your voice? “Never again.”

She stands with you for a while in the ruins of what you both once called home before walking away. You don’t know where she plans on going, but you don’t stop her to ask.

You wander around the town before deciding not to deny yourself anymore and arrive at the bar. The usual bartender that would smile when he sees you isn’t there, and instead, a silent frowning woman serves you a drink. Being at the bar reminds you of him–it seems almost everything does nowadays. You walk around as you drink, touching the lid of the piano you’d pretended to play to impress him. You could practically see him here, smiling as he was that night and throwing peanut shells onto the ground. You down your shot, the whiskey burning at your throat. You could swear it didn’t feel as bad when you were doing it with him.

There is no funeral for Phil. His parents are most likely embarrassed of even being related to him, and everyone else who really cared, like you, didn’t exactly have the funds for it.

You find yourself working in a mundane job in an office. It pays enough to support you, and you quite like the mindless movements keeping your thoughts away from everything else. No one there seemed to recognize you, or if they did, they didn’t care.

Everything in the town reminds you of him. The streets that you’d walked together millions of times, trying your best to obscurely hold hands, the theater where you first saw him and knew then that you had to have him, the bank the two of you were supposed to visit each week to keep up with your funds, everything. You envy the blind men who didn’t have to see everything around them that might remind them of something they lost.

When you’ve saved up enough, you leave. You pack the bare essentials, a couple clothes, food, money, and blankets, and move elsewhere. You leave everything behind, and maybe, that’s okay.

While you were packing up, you found old pictures of you, some cut out from various newspapers and some you’d gotten taken. You want to smile at them, but you can’t find it in you to. One catches your eye, a picture the photographer had taken when Phil wasn’t paying attention. He’s not looking at the camera but slightly to the left, at you, and grinning wide.

You throw the others in the garbage.

The new town feels like the last one yet different at the same time. You walk through it without him running through your mind.

You meet Charity while working, and she’s the first person in a long time to smile at you so kindly. She tells you of her life, moving here to go to boarding school and never finding a reason to return home after. You tell her you moved here for more opportunities but nothing beyond that.

You two get along well, and she helps you smile more. She doesn’t ask what she always finds you crying about, and you never tell her.

You don’t think about the circus as much with her around.

Years pass by, and as they do, you begin to doubt your memories more and more. It started with the small things like leaving your keys at home or forgetting where you left a book. Sometimes, you think about the circus, and you wonder whether you really ever were a ringleader dancing under a spotlight.

Only Charity and you attended your marriage, and that was fine.

When you decided to move in together, you had to pack up everything again. As you did, you came across a familiar photo of someone from the past. His smile makes you smile back, and it takes a couple minutes of staring at it to remember Phil’s name. You glance up from the photo to see Charity looking at you with a sad smile.

“That’s him, isn’t it? The one you’ve been grieving over,” she says. You don’t respond as your grip on the paper tightens.

“It’s in the past.” You crumble it up and throw it in the trash bag. Your heart hurts for a long time afterwards.

Charity feels like someone you never knew you needed in your life. She keeps you grounded but never stops you if you want to try something enough. She enjoys having fun, and you find yourself dancing or playing games of your childhood after dinner every night. Sometimes, during hide and seek, you expect to see someone else when you discover her hiding place. The feeling dissolves when she smiles at you.

When you find out Charity’s pregnant, the first name you think of is Phillip, but it’s hard to recall why. It didn’t matter anyway, you suppose, when she gave birth to two girls, one after the other. And when you see them for the first time, you forget why you wanted to name a son so badly to begin with.

Your girls like to hear bedtime stories. They ask about your younger days. When you look back, there’s little you can think of before Charity. Your smile at them falters because it feels like you’re forgetting something, something important. Instead, you tell them a story about you being a knight and slaying dragons.

That night, when you dream, you dream of someone far away. You dream of him spinning and jumping in a bar. You dream of him dancing under the colorful lights of a circus. You dream of you two dancing together to a slow song after all the colorful lights have gone. You dream of the taste of his lips, minty with a hint of alcohol. You dream of his fingers as he unbuttoned his bright red coat that could remind someone of yours but really wasn’t. You dream of how warm he always felt and how nicely he fit in your arms.

In your dreams, you call his name. Once and then again before he turns to you, a bright smile on his face.

You wake with a name on your tongue, but it fades as quickly as it came, lost in your memories again.


End file.
